Descartes Study Q's

Question 1

What does Descartes’ “meditator” remember about his childhood that he wants to correct?

Answer 1

He has a large number of falsehoods that he had accepted as true in his childhood.

Question 2

The meditator sets about trying to doubt all of his former opinions, but realizes he cannot do so individually. What, then, is his strategy?

Answer 2

He will go straight for the basic principles on which all his former beliefs rested.

Question 3

What is the first thing that the meditator says he must doubt/ occasionally deceives us?

Answer 3

The senses deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance.

Question 4

What is the second thing that the meditator must doubt? Why?

Answer 4

The second thing that the meditator must doubt is “Where am I? What am I wearing? etc.” because I could be dreaming/drugs/crazy

Question 5

What is Descartes’ “painter analogy?” How does it attempt to show that what we experience cannot be COMPLETELY unreal?

Answer 5

Descartes’ painter analogy is that if a painter tries to create a siren, they will still base all of it on things that are real. It attempts to show that what we experience cannot be completely unreal because ultimately the painter is basing their painting on real things that exist. We do this in our dreams.

Question 6

What is this class of “simple” and “universal” things supposed to include?

Answer 6

Corporeal nature in general, and its extension; the shape of extended things; the quantity, or size and number of these things; the place in which they may exist, the time through which they may endure, and so on.

Question 7

What does the meditator say to people who claim that God would not allow us to be deceived all the time, even about simple things – like adding 2+3 (because he is good)?

Answer 7

The meditator says that If it were consistent with his goodness to have created me such that I am deceived all the time, it would seem equally foreign to his goodness to allow me to be deceived even occasionally.

Question 7

Which sciences does Descartes list as more sure? Which as more doubtful? WHY?

Answer 7

More sure:
Arithmetic, Geometry

More doubtful:
Physics, Astronomy, Medicine

Question 7

What, at the end of Meditation 1, does the meditator say he must be on constant guard against? What analogy does he use for this danger?

Answer 7

He must be on constant guard against assenting to any falsehoods. The analogy he uses for this danger is “I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being woken up, and goes along with the pleasant illusion as long as he can.”

Question 8

To avoid talking about God, what figure does the meditator now turn to in order to aid in his “hyperbolic doubt?”

Answer 8

He turns to an Evil deceiver in order to aid his “hyperbolic doubt”

Question 9

What does the meditator say his doubt experiment makes him feel like?

Answer 9

His doubt experiment makes him feel like he has fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles him around so that he can either stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top.

Question 10

What revelation does the meditator finally come up with? What MUST exist even if I am constantly tricked by an evil deceiver? WHY?

Answer 10

The meditator finally comes up with the revelation that “I am, I exist.” Even if I am constantly tricked by an evil deceiver “I” exist because the deceiver can’t be deceiving nothing. “I” have to exist in order to be deceived.

Question 11

The meditator now considers what “I” actually means. What is the first definition of man that he rejects, and WHY?

Answer 11

The first definition of man that he rejects is that man is “A rational animal.” He rejects this definition because Then he would have to inquire what an animal is, what rationality is, and that would lead him down the slope to other harder questions which he does not want to waste his time on.

Question 12

What is the second definition of a “man” that is given?

Answer 12

The second definition of man that is given is “a body”

Question 13

How SPECIFICALLY does Descartes’ describe the body? In particular, in terms of “location,” “occupation of space,” and “movement.”

Answer 13

• Something that has a specific location
• Moved from without
• No two can be in the same place
• Nutrition
• sense-perception

Question 14

What functions of the soul does the meditator REJECT? Why?

Answer 14

He rejects nutrition, movement, and sense-perception because these all require a body.

Question 15

So what IS the true function of the soul, and also INSEPERABLE from the person themselves?

Answer 15

The true function of the soul is thought. Thought is inseparable from the person.

Question 16

What, then, is the true definition or essence of a person?

Answer 16

The true definition or essence of a person is that they are “A thing that thinks.”

Question 17

What does Descartes find “puzzling” about what we apparently know with more distinctness? WHY? What does this have to do with being able to “picture things in the imagination?”

Answer 17

“The corporeal things of which images are formed to my thought, and which the senses investigate, are known with much more distinctness than this puzzling “I” which cannot be pictured in the imagination.” Basically, It is often harder to imagine what we know most clearly.

Question 18

What do people “commonly” think they understand most of all?

Answer 18

The bodies which we touch and see

Question 19

What does the famous “wax” example prove about our sense perceptions?

Answer 19

The famous wax example proves that we can’t fully trust our sense perceptions because if we did, then when the wax was hard, it would not still be the same wax as when it was soft and had a different texture.

Question 20

What does the meditator conclude about the TRUE nature of the wax? (when we take all of its changing characteristic away) What is the TRUE way that we know the wax?

Answer 20

The true nature of the wax is that it is flexible and changeable. The true way that we know the wax is by believing that it is capable of being extended and in many more different ways than I will ever encompass in my imagination.

Question 21

Why does the infinite number of different shapes and extensions of wax PROVE that we really know its true nature through the MIND and not the IMAGINATION?

Answer 21

The nature of this piece of wax is in no way revealed by my imagination, but is perceived by the mind alone.

Question 22

What does the meditator say is “inside him” (and thus CERTAIN) and what is “not inside him,” when he senses something?

Answer 22

The meditator says that sensory perception and imagination are inside him. What is not inside him is the external things that he can’t be certain of due to his senses being imperfect.

Question 23

What, “as a general rule,” does the meditator say shows that a given perception is TRUE?

Answer 23

“Whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.”

Question 24

What “mistake” did the meditator say he made with regard to the ideas of things “apprehended by the senses?” (e.g., the earth, sky, stars, etc.)

Answer 24

He made the mistake of believing that there were things outside him which were the sources of his ideas and which resembled them in all respects. His mistake in doing this was that if his judgment was true, it was not thanks to the strength of his perception.

Question 25

What is Descartes’ main concern in this meditation? Why?

Answer 25

Descartes’ main concern in this meditation is whether God exists and whether he can be a deceiver.

Question 26

What cannot “strictly speaking” be false? On the other hand, what must we be on guard against making a mistake?

Answer 26

Ideas cannot be false. The only thoughts where we must be on our guard against making a mistake are judgments.

Question 27

Q
What are the THREE classes of ideas that the meditator identifies?
A

Answer 27

What a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is.

Question 28

What is the meditator’s example of how the object does not always resemble the idea?

Answer 28

There are two different ideas of the sun which I find within me. one of them makes the sun appear very small. The other idea shows the sun to be several times larger than the earth. Obviously both these ideas cannot resemble the sun which exists outside me; and reason persuades me that the idea which seems to have emanated most directly from the Sun itself has in fact no resemblance to it at all.

Question 29

Which ideas (those of “substances” or those of a substance’s “modes”) have more objective reality? What idea, does the meditator say, has the MOST “objective reality” of all?

Answer 29

Ideas of “substances” have more objective reality. The idea of a supreme God is the most “objective reality” of all.

Question 30

What is the rule about “cause” and “effect” that the meditator states?

Answer 30

There must be at least as much reality in the CAUSE as there is in the EFFECT.

Question 31

What are the TWO conclusions that the meditator draws from this rule about “cause” and “effect?”

Answer 31

It follows that something cannot arise from nothing and also that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect.

Question 32

How does the meditator define the word “God?”

Answer 32

The meditator defines the word “God’ as “A substance that is infinite, ( eternal, immutable) independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else that exists.”

Question 33

What is the meditator’s conclusion based on the definition of God?

Answer 33

His conclusion is that the idea of God could not have originated from himself and therefore this means that God exists.

Question 34

Why does the meditator deny that we can think of the “infinite” God by simply negating the ideas of regular finite things?

Answer 34

We are finite substances therefore we cannot create the idea of something infinite. therefore it must have been an idea that came from a substance that really was infinite.

Question 35

What, then, is the basis for believing that God actually exists?

Answer 35

The mere fact that I exist and have within me an idea of a most perfect being provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists.

Question 36

What “class” of ideas (innate, adventitious, or invented) is God, according to Descartes?

Answer 36

God is considered innate.

Question 37

How does the meditator prove that God is not a deceiver?

Answer 37

God cannot be a deceiver because he is perfect and deception is imperfect.

Question 38

What does Descartes now say that he can “distinctly imagine”? What are all of its features?

Answer 38

Quantity or continuous quantity is something that Descartes can distinctly imagine. He can distinctly imagine the extension of the quantity in length, breadth, and depth. The features are regarding shape, number, motion, and so on.

Question 39

Look up the idea of the “Cartesian Circle.” How does it relate to this and earlier Meditations? See: “Now, however, I have perceived that God exists, and at the same time I have understood that everything else depends on him, and that he is no deceiver; and I have drawn the conclusion that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive is of necessity true.”

Answer 39

It is a circular argument: I know that what I perceive is true. How? Because God is not a deceiver. How do I know that? Because I perceive that God exists.

This relates to earlier mediations because he is trying to prove that God exists.

Question 40

What is Descartes’ point about the “chiliagon”? What does it say about the difference between the “imagination” and “pure understanding”?

Answer 40

His point about the Chiliagon is that you don’t have to imagine something is order to understand with the mind

Question 41

Which, the “pure understanding” or the “imagination” is related to the body and perceptions?

Answer 41

The “imagination”

Question 42

What is Descartes’ claim about personal identity and the body?

Answer 42

Absolutely nothing else belongs to my nature or Essence except that I’m a thinking thing. It is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.

Question 43

How does the meditator show that the “I”/mind is more closely connected to the body than a sailor is to a ship?

Answer 43

I and the body form a unit. If this were not so I would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken.

Question 44

What does the meditator now say that he knows about the SOURCE of his sense perceptions? Do perceptions necessarily RESEMBLE their sources?

Answer 44

He believes that various other bodies exist in the vicinity of his body and that some of these are to be sought out and others avoided. “I am correct in inferring that the bodies which are the source of these various sensory perceptions possess differences corresponding to them, though perhaps not resembling them.” These perceptions don’t resemble their sources.

Question 45

What does Descartes say is (and is not) “in” the fire?

Answer 45

The feelings of heat or pain are not “in” the fire. But it has something in it that produces in us the feelings of heat or pain. Even though there is nothing in any given space that stimulates the senses, it does not follow that there is no body there.

Question 46

How does the meditator differentiate between the mind and the body?

Answer 46

The body is by its very nature divisible while the mind is utterly indivisible.

Question 47

What does the meditator say about the mind/ body relation?

Answer 47

The mind is not immediately affected by all parts of the body, but only by the brain, or perhaps by just one small part of the brain, namely the part which is said to contain the “common” sense.